


shot reverse shot

by telm_393



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Ableism, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Consent Issues, Friendship, Gen, Legal Drama, Medical Procedures, Mental Health Issues, News Media, Nightmares, No Romance, On Hiatus, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, Self-Harm, Social Media, Suicidal Thoughts, The Author Is Not A Legal Professional Either, The Author Is Not A Medical Professional, Victim Blaming
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-30
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 22:40:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4037230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telm_393/pseuds/telm_393
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt is attacked, and the guys who do it get it on video. The video goes viral, and Matt is left struggling to deal with both what happened to him and the fallout. Foggy, Karen, and Claire are out of their depth, but they're going to do anything they can to help.</p><p>In all of this, there's the overarching question: where do we go from here?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fight or Flight

**Author's Note:**

> This is...I'm not sure what this is. The first chapter in particular is more graphic than anything I've ever written, as it's the chapter with the assault. Please be warned that this fic contains a lot of triggers, all of them enumerated in the tags.
> 
> After the first chapter, this story is largely about the aftermath of rape (and the recovery process).
> 
> This is based on this ( http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/1296.html?thread=2022928#cmt2022928 ) prompt on the kink meme with one difference being that Matt is raped out of Daredevil costume, just as his everyday self.

Between fight or flight, Matt will always choose fight.

He usually doesn’t have a choice anyway.

Matt will always choose fight, so he fights, focuses his senses and hears his cane clatter onto the concrete and his glasses, knocked to the ground, crunch under somebody's shoe and the sound of heavy breathing, of one—two—three—four—five heartbeats, not including his own.

Five. Matt can deal with five, even with his face unmasked and his street clothes on.

He was working late again.

He’s never had too much trouble walking home alone at night. It’s not like the dark bothers him. People have tried to mug him before, sure, but he’s always been able to incapacitate them so quickly the attempts barely even registered, so quickly he might as well have been a dream to them, or a nightmare.

These guys got the jump on him, though. He was distracted. Stupid. Listening to music three blocks away, someone on the piano playing a melody he recognized from a long time ago.

He still hadn't figured out what song it was when he was pulled into an alleyway—an alley that smells and tastes like rats and garbage and sweat and copper and cigarette smoke clinging to unwashed clothes—and hit before he realized that some assholes had made a bad decision in thinking he was an easy target.

Matt’s senses sharpen until the whole world is just this alley, until all he’s focusing on are the men who want to hurt him, who are panting with excitement.

He’s not sure how big they are, but he has a basic idea from their heat signatures and the way the air moves around them. They're bigger than him. Bulky muscle.

Okay, fine.

They're a lot bigger than him.

Matt hears the air around one guy’s fist whoosh and leans out of the way before he can get hit again.

These guys are relatively young, probably around Matt's age. Twenties to thirties. All over six foot, most likely. Great. Matt’s pretty sure they don’t have stitches on their torso either, stitches that just ripped open. He tastes his own blood in the air, but he’s used to it. He hits a guy, kicks another one, bangs one’s head against the wall, sweeps the feet out from underneath another one. They swear and growl and they’re angry but it’s not like Matt gives a shit. He’s winning. He’s going to win this.

Easy.

And then there’s a blow across his shoulders and he yells out in surprise. Stumbles. Nearly falls, but manages to get himself upright again.

He doesn’t know what that was—a baseball bat? Almost definitely a baseball bat. Matt is briefly, uncomfortably, reminded of Foggy. Foggy would be so pissed if he realized that Matt had gotten himself into trouble outside of the night job. He’s already pissed that Matt gets himself hurt in the context of the night job. Foggy's going to be mad if Matt gets hurt too badly, and Matt doesn't want that.

Matt turns on his heel and aims a kick at the guy with the bat's neck, but he's still off balance and he hits the guy's shoulder instead.

The shoulder dislocates. The guy screams.

Baseball bat across Matt's shoulders again, and Matt goes down, a hairline fracture creeping across his shoulder blade.

“Little fighter, aren’t you?” one of the guys growls, holding Matt’s shoulders down. He might be the biggest one. Matt broke the man's nose, he can hear the bones grinding and the blood dripping and he can taste the copper rich on his tongue.

Matt struggles against the hands on his body, kicks at the guy's stomach until he hits it and the guy lets out a pained exhale and then bangs Matt’s head against the pavement.

Matt gasps in pain, feeling warm blood seep into his hair, feeling his world tilt precariously. Someone else is holding down his legs, and as he focuses on the voices of the men again—the one holding Matt’s shoulders rasps every word, the one holding down his legs has a clearer voice, deep and low—he hears, “We should teach pretty boy a lesson.”

The smooth-voiced one chuckles and says, “Guess so.”

The other men laugh, and Matt can smell alcohol, beer. They’re not drunk, though, they’re just on the other side of tipsy.

Matt isn’t dressed as Daredevil and for just a moment he’s glad about that, because as he feels somebody’s hand travel down to the waistband of his pants, he opens his mouth to scream for help.

The scream is cut off by someone backhanding Matt across the face and then covering his mouth. Matt gags. The man’s hand is huge and grimy and there’s blood under his fingernails and the remnants of cigarette after cigarette burned into every groove in his palm. Matt bites the guy’s hand as hard as he can, until he tastes blood heavy on his tongue, and the guy yells and removes his hand.

“You do that again,” the man snarls. “And I’ll pull out your teeth. Wanna test me?”

Matt doesn’t. Matt doesn’t, because the guy’s heart is beating fast and excited but he couldn’t hear any telltale skip, so it’s better not to test this. “I’ll fucking destroy you,” Matt whispers, voice shaking with terror and rage at these men, at himself for letting this happen. “I’m going to fucking crush you!” he says louder, but then the hand is over his mouth again and Matt is struggling, struggling, but the whole world is getting so muted and his breaths are coming so fast and shallow and his pants are being unzipped and the sound of the other man’s pants unzipping—metal on metal—echoes in his head.

“I’m going to cut you to pieces,” Matt screams, muffled against the guy’s hand, and then he’s on his stomach—and he’s screaming again, because it hurts.

It _hurts_.

He didn’t expect it to hurt like this, not when he’s so used to pain, but it does, and there’s a click somewhere, a sound Matt knows and would be able to place, but he’s distracted—

“Help!” he screams against the man’s hand. “Help!” he screams again as the concrete bites against his cheek and the hand presses harder against his lips, his tongue. He’s trying to struggle, trying to place who is touching him, but there are many hands, there are hands on his shoulders, his hips, his legs, and they burn like hot metal.

He’s screaming and then he’s biting down his screams. Don’t let them see you cry, don’t let them hear you beg.

_Our enemies control jack shit by the time we’re done with them._

Matt is trying to drag himself away from these men, but he’s being held down, he can’t—he can barely move—and it’s starting to exhaust him, straining against—he can’t move, he can’t breathe, the world is cacophonous at some moments and muted at others, there’s a man—there’s another man—different hands, different hands, a different—they’re taking turns.

Matt’s been torn apart so many times, this shouldn’t hurt so much but this has never happened and he didn’t expect it to be this way, he’s thought about this before, he thought it wouldn’t be this bad, not for him, not like it would be for other people, he thought he’d be okay, but this isn’t what he expected. No, actually he didn't expect it, not at all, instead he filed it under _things that could happen_ and he hadn’t realized he’d also filed it under _things that won’t_.

There’s blood in his mouth and another—

The pain is unbearable, but he’s not screaming, he’s not going to scream, he’s gasping and gagging and he finally says, “ _Stop_ ,” and that’s begging so he tries to hold it back because he’s not going to beg, that’s not what he does, that’s not how he is, he shouldn’t be here at all, he's an idiot, he's the stupidest man in the world for letting this happen, fuck, Foggy's going to be so disappointed, so mad. “No,” he sobs. “No, no, no.”

There’s laughter and jeers and _he’s pretty_ and _look at him taking it_ and no, no, no, wild anger overtakes Matt’s body and he nails one guy in the throat with his elbow and then he’s choking because he’s—

Well.

Because he’s being choked, and Matt actually giggles at the thought, feeling delirious, lightheaded, feeling like if he could just get up he could tear through these guys even though he can barely even think beyond _survive_.

The hands around Matt’s throat loosen and he coughs and gags and says, voice hoarse, “I won’t even give you the mercy of death, I’ll cut out your tongues and hear you choke on your blood and it’ll be fucking _funny_ , I’ll—”

He gasps, he lets out a sob, he lets out a hoarse scream, they’re laughing at him, they’re mocking him, and he says through his tears, says it viciously, “Let’s see if you’re still laughing…” he interrupts himself by screaming wordlessly, hoarsely, again, bites back a _please_ , bites back a _no_. “When I…when I…”

Another guy. How many? How many have there been? How many will there be? How much do they want? Another hand covering his mouth, another body—

Matt shouldn’t be losing track, shouldn’t be losing count, this man’s hand smells like bubblegum and the next time the hand is removed from Matt's mouth Matt screams, “When I tear your _dicks_ off!”

His face is shoved harder against the ground, flesh scraping off of his forehead. “Mouthy little fucker,” one of the guys says, and Matt hasn’t heard him before, he doesn't think.

Matt’s world has become a pinprick of pain and fear and powerlessness, he can’t get them off, he can’t get them off—

“Help,” he chokes out. “Help, help, Foggy, please, I’m sorry, help!”

“No one’s fucking hearing you, pretty boy,” someone says, and there’s laughter and Matt’s sobbing, he’s loud about it now, the smell and taste of blood covers his tongue and mouth like chloroform, the exhaustion covers his skin like a blanket, like the men—

He smells them he tastes their arousal and if he was—

“I’m gonna gut you,” Matt sobs. “I’m gonna rip your throats out—I’m gonna—”

He’s not going to do any of those things.

He’s going to die here.

He’s going to die here and it’ll probably hurt less than this.

There's shame running through his veins like blood, because he shouldn’t have let this happen, he shouldn’t have been stupid, shouldn’t have been distracted, shouldn’t be crying or screaming, shouldn’t be so focused on the pain that his head is swimming and all the energy is seeping out of his body, shouldn’t be scared.

“Help,” Matt is whispering when it ends. “Help, help, help. Please, God. Please, help.”

A click, a phone turning off.

Matt doesn’t know what the hell that’s supposed to mean, why he’s hearing someone’s phone turning off what must be blocks away when everything else has turned to cotton.

The guys are walking away and Matt’s body against the ground is numb and he wants to scream with the last of his voice but instead he grinds out, most likely too softly for the guys to hear, “See you in Hell.”

And he loses consciousness.


	2. Emergency Contact

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So you guys know, I'm planning to switch POV's. Every other chapter will be Matt's POV, and then the chapters that are not Matt's POV will be the POV of one of four characters, and I'll cycle through those four characters every other chapter until the story is done.
> 
> Sorry this chapter is short, I just thought it ended at a good (terrible, horrible) place.

Foggy’s the only family Matt has left, and he’s always terrified for Matt. He’s terrified that Matt’s going to do something stupid as Daredevil—not that Daredevil isn’t just stupid in the first place—and get himself killed or hurt so badly he can’t bounce back at least physically. He’s also generally terrified that Matt’s going to get himself killed or hurt just as _Matt_ , just as himself, and Foggy's always been afraid of that.

Every time Foggy gets a phone call from an unknown number, panic settles in his stomach until he can be sure that it’s not the hospital, calling him to tell him that Matt’s in a coma, that Matt was hurt as Daredevil and had to go to the hospital and by the way he’s going to be indicted soon if he doesn't die, that Foggy should come down as soon as possible to identify his best friend’s body which is cooling in the morgue.

( _You’re taking years off of my life here, buddy,_ Foggy mutters to Matt as he sterilizes another bad cut that doesn’t quite need stitches and wishes Matt would flinch.)

So when Foggy gets a call from an unknown number, he takes a deep breath, answers the phone, and tries to keep the worry out of his voice as he says, “Foggy Nelson speaking.”

And of course, since he’s been so lucky when it comes to this so far, since even though he’s been Matt’s emergency contact and health care proxy for years he’s never gotten a call from the hospital (not that he’s never ended up taking Matt to the hospital or riding along with him in an ambulance, but those are stories he prefers not to think about), it’s a call from the hospital.

“Hello, is this Franklin Nelson?” a woman asks, voice businesslike.

“Yes,” Foggy says, stomach twisting into knots.

“Okay, I’m Rita Evans at Metro General Hospital. I’m calling because you’re listed as the emergency contact for a Matthew Murdock.”

“Yeah,” Foggy says, running to his room and grabbing his jacket, trying to put it on while still holding his phone. “Yeah, what happened?”

“Mr. Murdock was brought in by ambulance an hour ago—”

“What the hell happened?” Foggy asks, running down the stairs of his apartment complex.

“He’s in surgery right now.”

“For what? What happened, is he going to be okay?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t tell you anything else over the phone. Do you know where Metro General is?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be there as soon as possible,” Foggy says before hanging up and flagging down the first taxi he sees. “Metro General,” he gasps out when he slides into the passenger seat, and the cab driver gives him a concerned look and starts driving.

The cab driver gets Foggy there in good time, and Foggy gives him a sizable tip and rushes into the hospital, almost tripping over his own feet when he gets to the receptionist’s desk. “I’m Matthew Murdock’s emergency contact and health care proxy,” Foggy says, gasping and suddenly aware of how little exercise he gets.

The receptionist looks Matt up and says, “He’s in surgery right now, you can go up to the fifth floor waiting room and wait for a doctor there.”

Foggy nods and takes the elevator to the fifth floor. It feels like ages before he can actually step out and go to the waiting room. He informs the receptionist on the fifth floor of who he is and the fact that he has to see a doctor and know what’s going on with Matt _now_ , and collapses into a seat, running his fingers through his hair nervously.

“Franklin Nelson?” a nurse asks, and he walks over to her, trying to ignore the shaking in his hands and legs. “You’re Matthew Murdock’s emergency contact?”

“And health care proxy, yeah. What the hell _happened_?” Foggy asks, practically begging at this point. This clearly wasn’t Daredevil related, he would’ve found out by now, they wouldn’t have known Matt’s name so quickly, whatever. So maybe Matt got hit by a car. Foggy almost hopes that he got hit by a car, that he’s got a couple of nasty broken bones and maybe some internal injuries that they can fix.

“Mr. Murdock was brought in after a 911 call alerted first respondents to where he was. It seems like he was attacked earlier tonight.”

“Attacked?” Foggy asks, because that doesn’t even make sense. Some random assholes jumped Matt and managed to hurt him that much? He’s been stabbed, then, or shot.

“Yes, he’s currently unconscious but he’s not in a coma, he was in and out of consciousness in the ambulance before he had to be sedated, though he wasn't responsive or coherent.”

Foggy’s not surprised at the sedation, honestly. Matt hates ambulances and he hates hospitals, and he’s freaked out more than once at a hospital or clinic.

“He's blind, NLP, his eyes aren't going to respond. I...you probably know that. What did he come in with? What injuries?”

“He came in with a concussion, various contusions and scrapes, including bruises around his throat, indicating that he was choked, a hairline fracture on his shoulder blade, internal bleeding, and severe anal fissures and rectal bleeding.”

Foggy can’t do anything but stare at the woman, who looks sympathetic.

“Um, what…seriously, what happened?”

“All evidence, particularly the anal fissures, rectal bleeding, and the presence of semen, indicate that Mr. Murdock was raped, probably by more than one person.”

“You’re…he…” Foggy stumbles backwards and the nurse takes a step forward, gripping his arm. “My best friend got…”

_My best friend got gang raped._

“Currently,” the nurse says, gentling her voice. “He’s having abdominal surgery to deal with the internal bleeding, and then he'll be moved into Intensive Care. But we don’t believe he’s going to be responsive in the 72 hours needed to get consent from the victim to perform a rape kit. As his medical proxy, you can make the decision to perform a rape kit or not while he’s unconscious.”

A rape kit. Foggy never, never thought he’d be in a situation where he’d have to make this decision. “Without…without him telling me if he wants to?”

“If he does end up pressing charges, past the evidence we’ve already legally gathered through implied consent, it could be helpful to have a rape kit done, but the police need it done within 72 hours, and there's a pretty good chance that Mr. Murdock's not going to be able to consent at that time.”

Foggy doesn’t know if Matt’s going to end up pressing charges. He wants him to, of course he wants him to, but it’s _Matt_. It’s Matt, and he likes pretending that bad things have never happened to him, though he's not as good at it as he thinks he is. Matt’s stubborn, and he’s going to be _afraid_ , and a rape kit—Foggy doesn’t know much about it but it sounds…invasive, and scary as fuck, and if Matt does end up pressing charges, maybe it would be better for it to be while he’s unconscious, maybe that wouldn't be as horrible for him. But that still feels like a violation right after a violation, and Foggy has no idea what to do.

He wants whoever did this to Matt to get caught, and get fucking _slaughtered_ for what they’ve done, but he doesn’t know what Matt wants. He knows Matt really well, he does, but this could go either way.

He doesn’t, he can’t—he can’t make this choice, he can’t—but if Matt ends up pressing charges?

Well, there’s already enough evidence, with all the injuries, with the fact that Matt might be able to remember what happened (and Foggy hopes that that isn’t true, he hopes that Matt can’t remember a goddamn thing, but he knows that whenever anything horrible happens in Matt’s life something else just makes it a million times worse, and he knows that even if Matt doesn’t remember, this is gonna—this is gonna—this is gonna be bad).

But the rape kit. The rape kit could help, maybe there’s DNA evidence, and even if Matt does remember, what if his own testimony isn’t enough? Without faces, identifying marks, skin color.

But the thing is that Foggy still doesn’t know if Matt’s going to press charges. If he was completely sure Matt wouldn’t, he’d say no. But Matt might. He really might, with the complicated morals he has, the way he deals with them, the way he's obsessed with getting criminals off of the streets and bringing them to justice, especially people who do things like this. So, yeah, Matt might press charges so that the guys who did this get caught and never hurt anyone again. Or at least don't hurt anyone again for a long time.

So Foggy says, “Do the rape kit.”

And then he throws up all over the shiny white floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also I did a lot of research on laws about what happens with collecting evidence when a rape victim is unconscious and cannot give informed consent and will probably not wake up and be coherent within 72 hours. What happens in this chapter is a really difficult ethical issue (which is something that I hope came through), but I do believe that it is legal.


	3. Heart Monitor

Matt wakes up to the obnoxious beeping of heart monitors and the too-familiar sounds of a hospital (crying, wheezing, coughing, beeping, doctors and nurses talking, families muttering among themselves) ringing in his ears.

(Matt’s cloudy with painkillers and the remnants of sleep still cling to him but he knows he didn’t expect to wake up.)

He doesn’t want to be here.

He doesn’t want to be dead, either, not really, but he doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t go to hospitals, he doesn’t do that, not unless something really bad happens.

He sits up (pulls his stitches, aches all over, whatever) and tries to figure out why he would be here, and then wishes he hadn’t, because he remembers.

He takes in a gasping breath and falls back against the pillows. The cotton sheets are rubbing his skin raw and he kicks them off, hears them fall to the floor with something like a _whoosh_.

He’s going to be sick, he thinks five seconds before he leans over the edge of the hospital bed and heaves bile all over the floor. He shouldn’t be here, he has to go home, he doesn’t go to hospitals, if he can just leave this place, just go home, he can forget this ever happened.

Matt thinks about hands pressing down on his back and the smell of cigarettes and bubblegum and throws up again.

He tries to get up after that, he really does, actually manages to stand up for a second before he falls down. He’s reminded of the first time he met Claire and briefly, absurdly, he wants to laugh, and then he wants to scream.

He wants to drown out the memories of voices saying _pretty_ and _take it_. He just wants it to stop, he wants them to stop, and the hospital, the hospital’s full of strangers and all of their conversations and crying and machines. Matt might be in the ICU, he’s not sure, he’s not, but there’s someone close to him saying, “Shit, someone call the nurse,” someone who smells like chemicals (chemo?) and vomit. “Hey, it’s okay, kid, someone’ll be here soon to help you back into bed, you’re okay.”

“No,” Matt gasps out. “No, I have to _leave_ , I have to go home, I can’t stay here.”

“Okay, kid, but maybe just for a while, you look pretty beat up.”

“No,” Matt says, and his voice wavers. “No, no, no.”

There are nurses near him now, saying, “Come on, Mr. Murdock, let’s get you back into bed.”

And Matt keeps insisting that he doesn’t need that, he needs to leave, he’s okay with the pain, he really is, but the smell and taste of sterilizing chemicals are making him sick.

He ends up back in the bed anyway, and the curtain around his bed is pulled around him and he hopes nobody can see him, he doesn’t want anyone to see him.

Of course there’s someone there when he wakes up again.

Matt knows exactly who it is, recognizes Foggy’s scent, strawberry shampoo and lilac soap and the underlying smell of sweat. Matt smells tears, too, and guilt clenches at his stomach because he didn’t mean to make Foggy cry, he _never_ means to make Foggy cry. Foggy’s heartbeat is erratic and Matt wonders if he knows what happened, wonders how mad he is. Foggy hates that Matt gets into trouble so much, he’s always saying that, he’s always worried, and now Matt’s gone and done something as stupid as this, now Matt’s failed at defending himself so completely that he’s in the fucking hospital.

Foggy’s breath keeps hitching. He desperately wants to say something, Matt knows it, but Matt doesn’t say a word about it, doesn’t prompt Foggy to say whatever it is he has to say. Matt’s too much of a coward to do that.

“Hey, Matt. They told me you’d been awake for a while. You’ve been in and out of consciousness for a few days, but you haven’t really said anything.” Foggy’s voice sounds small and sad and Matt didn’t want this, he never wanted this, he never means to make Foggy feel bad.

“Yeah,” Matt whispers, because he should say something to Foggy, who is somehow still here. Matt knows that Foggy feels some kind of obligation to him, knows that Foggy cares about him too much, and Matt just wants to close his eyes and go back to sleep.

Instead, he tilts his head so that he’s facing the side where Foggy isn’t, and says, “I…I…do you…do you…is it…?”

He can’t get any words out and he wants to scream again, wants to kick and destroy the fucking machine monitoring his rabbit-quick heartbeat.

He’s fine. He’s fine, he can do this. Compartmentalize. He doesn’t have to think about it. He’s not going to think about it.

“Matt, you…” Foggy sighs heavily. “Someone called the police when they found you. The police want to talk to you. Take your statement, see if you wanna press charges.”

“No,” Matt says. “No. I’m not doing that.”

Foggy takes a deep breath, like he knows he’s about to say something Matt’s really going to hate, and Matt’s breath is stuttering, but he copies Foggy’s deep breath, and then he’s breathing, oxygen rasping in and out of his aching throat.

“You were unconscious, and as your medical proxy, they asked me if they should do a rape kit.”

Matt wants to vomit again, but he swallows, keeps it down. He’s fine. He’s got his shit together, this’ll pass soon, he’s fine.

“I really didn’t know what you’d want to do, so I said yes.”

Matt sucks in an excruciating breath, and then lets out a dry sob. His throat feels destroyed and he can’t figure out why it’s his throat out of everything that keeps getting to him.

“Oh,” Matt says, breathes it out.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t…I didn’t know what to do. Matt…”

“Okay,” Matt whispers. “It’s okay.”

He was asleep. He was asleep, it’s okay, it makes sense, Foggy didn’t know what to do, Foggy ended up making this choice because Matt can’t fucking keep himself out of trouble and suddenly he thinks that he should be feeling bad and it’s so ridiculous that Matt wants to laugh again.

A rape kit.

He knows about those. If he doesn’t press charges, it just gets destroyed, over and done with.

He can’t bring himself to feel anything about it except the word.

 _Rape,_ he doesn’t want that word in his life, he doesn’t want that.

He’s so tired, and they did a rape kit on him. Because he got—

Charges. Matt hasn’t thought about opening an investigation, hasn’t even been awake long enough to consider it past no, because that just brings attention to him and what does he even have to say?

They won’t find anyone.

This is already a cold case, so Matt doesn’t have to worry about the police, the law, he’s not going to give a statement because it’s not like it’s going to do anything, he--

He has to.

He has to try and get these guys behind bars because if he doesn’t they’ll just do this again and leave someone who’s never done anything to deserve this like him, or worse, dead, and Matt knows that if he doesn’t do this, every single time he hears anything on the news about rape he’s going to be wondering if he could have stopped it by cooperating with the police.

Matt knows that there are things the law can’t do. He knows that those men are probably never going to get caught, are probably never going to go to trial, so maybe he should just let the investigation happen, even cooperate in it, because he knows that if something happens, if someone gets hurt and he could’ve stopped it, it’ll kill him.

Matt protects. It’s his job. Matt protects people even when he’s too stupid to protect himself, and he wants to forget about this, he just wants to forget about this forever, but he knows he’s not going to be going out as Daredevil for a while, that when he does put the suit on again he probably won’t find those guys, and if he does it might be just as bad as if he doesn’t.

Daredevil is not judge, jury, and executioner.

But sometimes Matt’s afraid he won’t be able to stop, and he said things, when it was happening, he said things that he can’t do, that he shouldn’t do.

“I don’t know what to do,” Matt whispers, voice rasping painfully. He hates himself after saying it, because he sounds so fucking powerless and vulnerable and that’s not how he’s supposed to be. “The statement,” he says, hoping Foggy will understand.

And because Foggy is Foggy, he understands.

“Matt, look,” Foggy whispers. “You know I’ll support you no matter what you do. But if you really, really want the truth, I want there to be an investigation that’s as effective as possible. I want these guys to get caught because they hurt you.” At that, Foggy pauses and takes in a shaky breath. He sounds like he’s going to start crying.

“Don’t cry,” Matt says uselessly, selfishly.

“Okay,” Foggy says. “Okay. And I want these guys to get caught because they might hurt someone else.”

“I know,” Matt says, choked. “I know.”

(His throat hurts because of all the screaming.)

“Okay,” Matt says. “I’ll do it.”


	4. Viral

Karen finds out about Matt getting hurt from Foggy, and she finds out the full story from the Internet. Foggy just says that Matt got jumped. At least he’s honest about that much this time—no fake car accident.

Karen understands why Foggy doesn't tell her everything upfront. She thinks she would have figured it out after a while, though, since she works so closely with Matt and something like that is hard to hide and Karen is very perceptive. Besides, she knows every trick in the book for keeping secrets.

She knows a lot of things that Matt and Foggy think she’s totally unaware of.

(They still think she doesn’t know about Daredevil.)

She doesn’t get the chance to figure out what happened to Matt on her own anyway, though she does have a suspicion that there’s something Foggy’s not mentioning, that the strained worry in his voice is hiding something horrible, that Matt might not have just been beaten up. And Karen’s a woman in the city (fuck, even when she was a kid in the Midwest she remembers the way her mother would warn her about rape, would tell her to make sure to not put herself in danger and not be a _slut_ because it’s the girls who aren’t careful who have it coming, sweetheart) and it’s not like she hasn’t been… _hurt_ before, and honestly the second she heard Matt had been attacked and was in the hospital her mind went there. But she doesn’t assume anything yet. She just hopes that her suspicions aren’t right.

Karen checks the news every day. She reads the paper and then she looks on the web to see if there’s anything interesting. All the breaking news goes on there. Obviously, there’s nothing on what happened to Matt, not even in the paper, because it’s just an isolated incident in a bad neighborhood, never mind and carry on.

Matt’s been in the hospital a few days (Karen hasn’t visited yet, she tells herself it’s because Matt needs some space and knows that it’s really because she’s afraid of what she’s going to see when she finally faces him) when the news breaks. She sees it on the CNN website, the article with the most hits that day, an article that’s only been up for a couple of hours.

**VIDEO OF BRUTAL ATTACK GOES VIRAL.**

Karen’s heart jumps to her throat. Seriously, she’s really, really good at knowing things, and she’s really, really good at thinking the worst.

Brutal attack.

Matt’s been in the hospital for three days, and Karen’s seen him pretty badly hurt without going to the hospital, so brutal probably fits whatever happened to him.

Karen takes a deep breath. It’s probably not that.

(Who films themselves assaulting someone? Jesus _fucking_ Christ.)

Karen clicks on the article, starts reading, and starts feeling dizzy.

_Hell’s Kitchen._

_Sexual assault._

_Five attackers._

_Filmed on a phone._

_The name of the victim has not been released._

_The video was posted on torture porn websites._

_One of the websites reported the video to the police when they realized the attack wasn’t staged._

_The video has been taken down from most of the pornographic websites, but it’s being widely circulated on social media._

_Advocacy groups—_

_Outrage—_

_The title of the video and some comments made by the perpetrators suggest that the victim is disabled, possibly vision impaired._

“Oh, no,” Karen whispers, and her voice comes out thin and tear-choked. “Oh, Matt.”

There’s a video right at the top of the article, and Karen clicks on it because she doesn’t know if it’s him yet, it might not be him.

The reporter says the same things that were in the article, until she says, “The following may be disturbing.”

And Karen panics and tries to exit out of the window because she doesn’t want to see that, she doesn’t want to see, but her hands are shaking so hard that the cursor ends up shoved up against the very top of her screen and then there's _sound_.

It’s not part of the video, but it is a recording taken from it, complete with subtitles.

Laughter, cruel laughter, Karen knows this kind of laughter, and she’s frozen and she’s sobbing and there, there’s Matt’s voice, oh, God, that’s Matt’s voice, and he says _“let’s see if you’re still laughing when I tear your dicks off!”_

Karen laughs wildly as the sound bite comes to an end. Matt, that’s Matt, oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, that’s her friend.

Her friend, they put part of his attack on the news, on TV, there are people who’ve seen him attacked, who’ve seen the whole video, a viral video.

Outrage, the article said people were outraged and calling for an investigation.

Fuck that, it’s curiosity, plain and simple. Even _Karen_ was curious, and the thought makes her gag, because she feels like she’s invaded Matt’s privacy and that means the whole motherfucking _country_ has invaded Matt’s privacy.

It was posted on torture porn websites.

Karen dry heaves into her hands and slams her laptop shut and stumbles over to her kitchen counter, grabbing the first thing with any kind of fucking alcohol she sees, some kind of whiskey, Jack Daniels maybe, who gives a shit. She drinks too fast and it burns and it comes right back up, spilling down the front of her shirt. The bottle slips from her hands and shatters against the floor, and Karen breathes in and out shakily.

It was posted on torture porn websites.

Karen leans back against her counter and grips her head and sobs, open mouthed, wrenching, loud.

People _jacked off_ to that video.

Five attackers.

_Five._

She nearly broke when it was just one at a goddamn time.

 _Not Matt,_ she thinks. _Not my friend._

The police, the article said the video had already been reported to the police. Shit, so many people are going to get in on this. Foggy said that Matt was pressing charges, and Karen’s viciously glad about that even though she knows, she _knows_ , that it’s going to hurt _so much_. If the attack itself hasn’t torn him to pieces, a trial might.

(That’s why she didn’t press charges either time.)

She has to protect him. That’s what Karen does, she protects.

Give her a gun and she’ll shoot.

“Lord have mercy,” she whispers absurdly, and it sounds like something her mother would say.


End file.
